Stanko Ristic, a retired Serbia-Montenegro army helicopter pilot, and his son Predrag were taken into custody on suspicion of helping to hide Mladic, a former Bosnian-Serb general now in hiding.

A Belgrade district court spokeswoman, Marina Klaric-Zivkovic, confirmed the arrests, saying the two were detained "for aiding a fugitive after he committed a criminal act."

Mladic has been on the run since 1995, when the UN tribunal in The Hague indicted him for genocide. The charges are connected to the massacre of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.

(Reuters)

The Fugitives

Ratko Mladic (left) confers with Radovan Karadzic during a meeting in Pale in 1993 (epa)

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Ten years have passed since former Bosnian Serb leader RADOVAN KARADZIC and his former military commander General RATKO MLADIC were indicted by the Hague-based war crimes tribunal for genocide and other war crimes. The two fugitives remain at large, despite the obligation of NATO-led peacekeepers and the various governments in the region to arrest the indictees and send them to The Hague. Many people wonder why the most powerful military alliance in history and a host of governments seeking Euro-Atlantic integration remain unable to catch the two... (more)

Coffins of Srebrenica victims being prepared for burial in October (AFP)

SREBRENICA: The July 1995 massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb fighters near the UN-designated safe haven of Srebrenica is the worst atrocity of its kind in Europe since the end of World War II. Since the incident, the name Srebrenica has become practically synonomous with ethnic cleansing....(more)